The eReserve team have worked with a lot of institutions who have different sized student populations, academic focus and technological makeup and can offer experience and lessons to ensure your eReserve Plus rollout is successful.
In addition to collaborating with your eReserve Plus Customer Advocate and onboarding team, during onboarding, there are some key points that drastically improve the uptake and use of eReserve Plus when it is deployed.
Key steps for successful deployment of eReserve Plus:
1. Make eReserve Plus available for all academic staff
When connecting eReserve Plus to your Learning Management System via LTI1.3 we strongly advise that you make the LTI connection available for all academic staff in the Learning Management System by default (add eReserve Plus to your default template so all courses in the Learning Management System have it available).
The benefits
This approach ensures that eReserve Plus is available for all academic staff and students by default. It ensures that students across courses and classes are presented with and access their learning materials in a consistent manner.
Academic staff dont have to choose to opt-in the system as it is available by default.
Faculty automatically have access to eReserve Plus and the ability to manage resources, search the library and curate resources as well as see student progress and engagement right away.
All copyright resources delivered across all courses and classes will have centralised copyright checking, reporting and analytics allowing the institution to have a greater degree of certainty with regard to copyright compliance and analytics to inform evidence based decision making with regard to subscription renewals.
Alternatives
Not all courses are taught the same way. Faculty and academic staff who dont need or want a course reserve or reading list can quickly and easily remove the LTI link to eReserve for their course as they need. This approach allows all faculty to use the system while those who dont can opt-out swiftly.
2. Effective Change Management – Use the Supplied Training Materials, Brochures and Slides
Academic staff save a considerable amount of time when adding materials using eReserve Plus, can identify students needing assistance and manage learning materials efficiently. To support your team getting faculty up and using eReserve Plus quickly we have developed and supply customer branded materials to help run in-person or online information sessions.
As part of supporting academic engagement during onboarding, the eReserve team will provide you with:
- a faculty brochure detailing benefits for academic staff (branded in your institutions logo)
- a PowerPoint slide deck (using your institutions eReserve Plus theme) for conducting information sessions for faculty and academic staff and;
- a guided training document for academic staff (there are seperate sections for admin and library staff) showing faculty how to use eReserve Plus right away.
Demonstrated Value
The materials will inform faculty and academic staff of features and benefits, give background on how the system works and provide detailed training in a step-by-step manner on using eReserve Plus in every day work. Faculty can at-a-glance view student engagement and identify students that may need assistance early preventing student attrition. Using the ability to embed eReserve Plus resources directly at the point of learning faculty can ensure the presentation of learning material to students at the most contextually appropriate location – within course content.
3. Get Faculty Using the system
Building upon the engagement and change management activities (item 2 above) one of the best ways of ensuring success is to have faculty use the system! This can be done en-masse (item 1 above) or by identifying an initial cohort of classes and faculty (scheduled for an upcoming semester or teaching session) to initially focus on one semester or group of classes. eReserve Plus is flexible so discuss what approach will work best for your institution with your eReserve Customer Advocate.
